It’s raining, windy, and freezing. Feels like home.

My first thought on emerging from our taxi in Punta Arenas is:

“Dear God, please let our hotel have central heating.”

   It’s 5 degrees celsius, but feels colder as there’s a gale raging, and horizontal rain pummels us, driving all things sideways – hair, clothes, eyebrows (Clives). Our hotel is in the centre of the city, a guft of warm air embracing us as we climb the stairs up to reception. Our room, up another elegant wood panelled stairway, overlooks the main square, and glory be to god, has a radiator emanating warmth. For the first time since leaving Argentina, my spirits lift. Moods often follow no rhyme or reason, but hazarding a guess, Santiago felt dangerous, La Serena desolate, but this feels like home. 

At the one place that is open, as most museums are shut for renovation, a lady tells us that sometimes “you have to hold onto railings as it is so windy you will be blown over!” As I have already been nearly blown over I think she’s joking, but it transpires that Punta Arenas can be much windier than the day we visited, with gale force winds a pretty regular occurrence.

Where Shackleton and his men were welcomed back to.

This is where they welcomed Ernest Shackleton and his men after they were stranded on Elephant Island in the Antarctic. To summon help Shackleton and 4 other men rowed in an open lifeboat across the notorious Drakes passage, part of the Southern Ocean, where waves reach 40 feet high; there’s an arresting passage about this here: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/may/03/weatherwatch-shackleton-in-an-open-boat-faces-a-cape-horn-roller?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

We are only here for two nights, ostensibly to recover from our late arrival, as the next leg of our journey is another long bus journey up to El Calafate. After a not-great dinner that costs a lot, we are off the next day – back into Argentina – yeehaa!

Also recommend this about their rescue:

Shackleton rescues men from Antarctica after 127 days stranded

El Calafate and Perito Moreno Glacier.

We get a coach to El Calafate, but you can fly there. The landscape is undulating, pale green, treeless – not unlike Shetland. But the houses remind me of Iceland, presumably for the same reason – both places have a tendency to blow your roof off. It seemed awfully strange to hear Spanish being spoken in such a Nordic setting.

El Calafate is a cheery one street town with many Parillas, restaurants with – vegetarians look away now- whole pigs being roasted round a fire in the window. It’s expensive compared to other places we’ve been to in Argentina, because it’s a tourist hot spot, but still cheaper than Chile. Clive orders a huge pile of lamb which is only a half serving, while I have seafood spaghetti because I’m lambed out.

We’re pretty much all here to visit the Moreno glacier, and the day after we arrve we take a tour and a boat to get up close. It’s worth the 90 minute drive. It’s the third largest glacier in the world after the Antactic and Greenland. The water we shower in, and clean our teeth with, is straight from this glacial melt.

Defcon 4 knicker alert.

Today we’ve made our way to El Chalten, which is only accessible by bus, where we’re self-catering. Our apartment is adorable, and snugly warm. Our host, smily, bright-eyed, bearded, same age as us, tells exactly where we should walk in the next few days, bearing in mind weather and routes that are open, and in the absence of any other plans, and suspecting he’s also taken our apparent physical fitness into the equation, we decide to follow his lead. We walk to a local waterfall, and go to the local supermarket on the way back to stock up. It seems that spag bol is the go to meal for every nationality as we all line up at the meat counter and ask them to mince our lamb. I am stiff as a board once back home. I’m looking forward to cooking for ourselves and catching up on washing, as I am pretty sure we both reek, and I am at the inside-out pant level wearing stage. Desperate times.